No league really wants autonomy in championships. If you use a method other than division winners you create needless turmoil. Best league record? Oh conference engineered it so school A had a patsy schedule. Vote or poll? You are biased against school B.

Division system can be messy but it works in a transparent manner so the results are accepted.

(01-03-2015 07:01 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  No league really wants autonomy in championships. If you use a method other than division winners you create needless turmoil. Best league record? Oh conference engineered it so school A had a patsy schedule. Vote or poll? You are biased against school B.

Division system can be messy but it works in a transparent manner so the results are accepted.

Not sure this is accurate, otherwise there wouldn't be a proposal to allow for it. Whether or not it passes is a different story. But obviously some conferences want it otherwise there would be no proposal to change the current rule regarding football conference championships.

Cheers,
Neil

I honestly think the ACC proposal is not about some weird way of choosing the teams like the two best records or anything. I think it's about not having to play the same seven teams every year, and allowing for more flexible schedules.

(01-03-2015 09:30 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  I honestly think the ACC proposal is not about some weird way of choosing the teams like the two best records or anything. I think it's about not having to play the same seven teams every year, and allowing for more flexible schedules.

Agree that they want more flexible schedules. But I don't see how you get a divisional champion if they aren't all playing each other within the division. Kind of defeats the purpose of having divisions.

Cheers,
Neil

(01-03-2015 09:30 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  I honestly think the ACC proposal is not about some weird way of choosing the teams like the two best records or anything. I think it's about not having to play the same seven teams every year, and allowing for more flexible schedules.

They already have the power to do that. Just have rotating non-permanent divisions.

(01-03-2015 09:37 PM)goofus Wrote:  

(01-03-2015 09:30 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  I honestly think the ACC proposal is not about some weird way of choosing the teams like the two best records or anything. I think it's about not having to play the same seven teams every year, and allowing for more flexible schedules.

They already have the power to do that. Just have rotating non-permanent divisions.

I think thatis the issue. More or less that is what they are trying to do, but there is some issue with that. What... I don't know? Same reason why people have pondered that a pod system is not totally legal under the current rules, as a pod system is exactly that: rotating divisions.

If you end up with 4 conferences of 16, its essentially 8 conferences that would be fairly geographically correct.

(01-03-2015 11:45 PM)MissouriStateBears Wrote:  If you end up with 4 conferences of 16, its essentially 8 conferences that would be fairly geographically correct.

If we end up with four conferences, they will then finally pass new rules for divisions. Why bother with what would be two conferences in one when you can simply write up some new rules that allow for four divisions instead of just two? It really is that simple. I don't know why folks have such a hard time with it. They aren't going to keep 8 team divisions for the long term. It is a terrible idea.

There really isn't a major DISADVANTAGE for division runner-ups who miss the CCG, according to the study I did last month. In fact, having a CCG, not having a CCG, and being a divisional runner-up all seemed to produce about an 80% rate of neutral or positive results for the team on the cusp of the playoff.

You don't need to read it all...but Michigan 2006 and Alabama 2011 both would have made the playoff even as runner-up to their divisions (and thus missing the CCG). Logic would tell you it's far HARDER to be a division runner-up and make the playoff...but actual analysis of past years say that if a team was "playoff worthy" before CCG weekend they still made the playoff 80% of the time.

Statistical Breakdown of Conference Championship Debate since 2005

I created a chart of the potential CFP candidates during the BCS era. Then, I graphed three X coordinates—Win in last week improved their BCStop4/CFP stock, Loss in last week hurt their BCStop4/CFP stock, or same BCStop4/CFP stock after last weekend. On the y coordinate, I created six categories—CCG favorites, CCG underdogs, conferences without CCGs but teams were in action, idle teams who were runner-ups in conference, and idle teams without a game during the last weekend.

I only included CCGs that were meaningful to the BCStop4/CFP in my study. 34 of the 44 CCGs since 1998 would have had an impact on the BCStop4/CFP. Just 26 of 34 mattered since 2005.

It’s fully impossible to make final conclusions on the impact of CCGs, primarily because no one knows exactly how the CFP committee would have ruled in each year. However, knowing what know about the importance of conference championships to the CFP, I considered any conference champion who was 5th or 6th in the final weekend to be a strong CFP candidate in my graph.

Here are the results.

CCG favorites—10 teams moved up in the BCS/CFP with a win; 6 teams moved down in the BCS/CFP with a loss; 8 teams stayed the same with a win. Two teams that moved down (Alabama in 2008 and Florida in 2009) might have still been eligible for the CFP, even with the loss., but I will count them as eliminated because of champion preference.

Overall, CCG favorites benefited or were not hurt 18 of 24 times for having a CCG.

CCG underdogs—4 teams moved up in the BCS/CFP with a win; 1 team moved down in the BCS/CFP with a loss; 0 teams stayed the same with a win.

Overall, CCG underdogs benefited or were not hurt 4 of 5 times for having a CCG. (Obviously, it’s rare for a CCG to include an underdog that has a shot at the BCStop4/CFP because a conference having 2 top 10 teams in its CCG game.)

Total CCG results—teams with a shot at a BCStop4/CFP benefited or were not hurt 22 of 29 times (2 of the 7 teams that were hurt saw another team from the same conference take their BCStop4/CFP spot; thus, the true value of a CCG to conference only hurt 5 times). 82% positive rate for conferences with CCG.

No CCG but a game on final weekend—4 teams moved up in the BCS/CFP with a win; 5 teams moved down in the BCS/CFP with a loss; 7 teams stayed the same with a win.

Overall, teams without a CCG but a game on the final weekend benefited or were not hurt 11 of 16 times.

No CCG and no game on final weekend--3 teams moved up in the BCS/CFP; 1 team moved down in the BCS/CFP; 9 teams stayed the same.

Overall, teams without a CCG or a game on the final weekend benefited or were not hurt 12 of 13 times.

Total No CCG results—teams with a shot at a BCStop4/CFP benefited or were not hurt 23 of 29 times. 79% positive rate for conferences without a CCG.

Division runner-up idle during CCG--3 teams moved up in the BCS/CFP; 2 team moved down in the BCS/CFP; and 5 teams stayed the same.

Overall, division runner-ups who were idle on CCG weekend benefited or were not hurt 8 of 10 times. (Both teams were moved down while idle were in 2007, a year with extreme results on the final two weekends.)

CONCLUSION—Over the course of 10 seasons, there is negligible difference in the help or hurt afforded by having or not having conference championship games. Teams have about an 80% chance of being helped by being in a conference with a title game (even if idle); teams have about an 80% chance of being helped by being in a conference without a title game (even if idle).

All that analysis should tell you is that the conferences would be of the mindset that they would want a Conference Tournament. It would further raise up their Champion on a pedestal so that there is pretty much no chance at all of there being a team that stands above them even if that team didn't make it into the conference postseason game(s).

Eventually people will grow to understand the system after it is put in place. At first the pollsters will fight against change, as most people do, but eventually they will accept it because....people always eventually accept change after throwing their little tantrums. The pollsters wont give major knocks to teams that lose the big post season games unless they lose in very bad fashion. Still though, to get to that post season, you earn it. You shouldn't be dropped below teams that didn't earn it. That is a fault with present and past polling systems.

(01-03-2015 05:34 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(01-03-2015 04:10 PM)Wolfman Wrote:  I The issue is, with 4 team pods, half of your games are taken by the pod.

A four team pod only guarantees three games out of eight or nine conference games, far less than half. Also uiu don't need 16 teams to have pods: you can easily do it with 12 or even 14 teams.

I'm no math wiz but that was in reference to playing the other teams in your pod twice. With 4x4 pods you play the other 3 teams in your pod twice (home/away). That is 6 games, half of the regular season.

(01-04-2015 03:14 PM)Wolfman Wrote:  

(01-03-2015 05:34 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(01-03-2015 04:10 PM)Wolfman Wrote:  I The issue is, with 4 team pods, half of your games are taken by the pod.

A four team pod only guarantees three games out of eight or nine conference games, far less than half. Also uiu don't need 16 teams to have pods: you can easily do it with 12 or even 14 teams.

I'm no math wiz but that was in reference to playing the other teams in your pod twice. With 4x4 pods you play the other 3 teams in your pod twice (home/away). That is 6 games, half of the regular season.

Where would you get the idea of playing them twice? You play the teams in your pod (3 games) then alternate the other pod you play each year (4 games) giving you seven of the games. But only three are fixed. How you handle the other confernce games varies depending on if you play eight or nine conference games. By the idea is it allows you to have 3 fixed games, maybe four, and rotate the other 4 or 5, whereas now the sec and ACC have seven fixed games (87% of your schedule) and the big ten has six fixed games (75%) unless you are located in Indiana (87%). Even the PAC has 55%- 67% of your schedule fixed. And of course the Big XII has 100% fixed.